WIP Wednesday and the Final quilt of 2013

Happy New Year!  Can't believe 2013 is gone and it's a new year - have to practice writing 2014 on my checks....always the first challenge of the new year :)

My last effort of 2013 was to finish a project I've been procrastinating on for way to long.  My husband requested a special quilt for a friend of our family and it's been really hard for me to get it going for some darn reason.  I intended to have it done before Christmas, but missed the mark by a few days.  The jockey was the worst part - those sleeves were making me really worried!  I finally decided I didn't need to make two sleeves, so I just used stitching to define the front sleeve and it worked out perfectly.  Those squares are 3/8 inch finished squares - I strip pieced those and it came out well.  The fusible doesn't work well to hold down all the layers with the seams, so the satin stitching was needed - but looks just fine and defines the sleeves quite well.  The hands, cuffs and pom-pom are all teeny pieces, held on with fusible web and topstitched like the rest of the larger pieces are.  Challenging, but doable.  The goggles are stitched with a heavy weight thread to show up well.

The blinkers were done with the same checkerboard as the sleeves of the jockey.

 

The tail was a spontaneous idea.  I used the same heavyweight thread that I used for the goggles, wound a ton of it around my fingers, then cut in half, stitched down the center where the tail belongs, then folded down and top stitched 1/8 inch from the first stitching!  I was very pleased with the result!

Here is most of the quilt.  The horses legs are blackened with threadwork.  I was happy overall with the quilting I did, I think the horse came out quite well!  I'm happy to cross this one off my list, and it makes a good final finish for 2013.

This quilt will be my first finish for 2014.  This is a custom order for a queen size quilt made out of baby clothes.  It's really heavy, but will be a wonderful keepsake!  I plan to do some echo quilting to bring out the circular patterns in the piecing.  The white square will have a bird and nest applique - should be quite cute when finished!   Here's to many more finished projects in 2014!

Check out the Quiltsy team blog for more WIPs by the talented quilters on Etsy!